Wonga walloped by OFT after nasty letters sent to debt-riddled customers

Some see them as the cute face of the stellar-interest payday loan industry but Wonga have been slapped about the face slightly by the Office Of Fair Trading over their attitude towards debtors.

The threat of a £50k fine has also been waved in the Wonga mush by the OFT, after ‘questionable debt-collection practices’ were discovered following an investigation. These included sending aggressive letters and emails to customers who had asked their card providers to reverse payments that had been made to Wonga, with some customers openly accused of being fraudsters. Nice.

The offending letters and emails were also sent out to punters who had started debt management plans in an attempt to stop themselves getting deeper into the financial mire.

David Fisher, the OFT's director of consumer credit, said: "We have acted to ensure that Wonga does not behave this way again. I would like to make it clear to businesses that they must not adopt aggressive or misleading practices with their customers." As mentioned earlier, there could be a £50,000 fine coming their way if it happens again. Goodness knows how much that’ll escalate to if the OFT bang a Wonga-esque 4,000% APR on top of it.

8 comments

Mike H.

To be fair, if you are thick enough to use Wonga (most of you Bitterwallet commentors), you deserve to be raped by a rabid gorilla who has been recently released from his chair having been forced to watch hour upon hour of beastiality porn whilst being massarged by one of the gorillaesque Kardashians.

That's Wonga, run for the benefit of Adrian Beecroft, right wing fuckwit, Tory party donor to the tune of half a million quid, and author of the now notorious report suggesting the ability to sack workers on the spot, relax rules on child labour and other such charming free market ideas.
Lower than vermin.

porkpies is right -
Wonga offer short term loans for up to a month, therefore you'll never achieve a 4000% APR as, quite simply, you can't borrow for a year.
They've got a good business model, and, having read a few interesting articles behind their tech, they appear quite impressive. Certainly, they're no worse than other payday loans companies and FAR better than the likes of the provident etc.

I have to agree with Mike on this one. Any silly tosser that thinks "....Wonga, that's exactly the type of debt I need to saddle myself with right now..." should be taken advantage of these licensed loan sharks.
My only regret in this whole sorry business is that Wonga don't offer credit worthy savvy bastards like me the chance to invest a few quid for the lending empire. You'd get a far better rate than those dappy bastards in the banks.

"These included sending aggressive letters and emails to customers who had asked their card providers to reverse payments that had been made to Wonga, with some customers openly accused of being fraudsters. Nice."
Someone explain that last bit to me please. Surely if customers are requesting that their card company reverse payments for money that they owe Wonga then not only is that highly illegal, but also deserving of nasty letters. I've never been one of the pro-payday lender company supporters, would never use or need to use one hopefully and I'm even less of a Wonga fan normally, since they used that obese londoner to shout at my face or those quite frankly scary looking puppets of condescending old folk - the latter don't serve to make me want to use the company more, less infact, not to mention an ever increasing desire to push over a pensioner in the street and spit in their face.
Having said all that however, I'm actually with Wonga on this one. If customers don't pay up, then they should be grateful all they're getting are angry letters and not angry men smashing open their doors and taking your belongings!